The Most Economical Video Game Purchase I’ve Ever Made

I’ve always been a pretty big fan of video games, but not obsessive about it. I am not into the standard shoot-em-up games nor do I get big into sports games anymore. My favorite game is Mario Kart for my Nintendo Game Cube and I also like strategy games.
This leads me to the most economical video game purchase I’ve ever made.
Before I tell you what it is, let me tell you something that I’ve enjoyed a lot over the past few years. I’ve always enjoyed playing football or baseball games, but not so much the ‘live action’ games. The part I really enjoy is what’s called ‘Franchise‘ mode. You basically take a team and play it out over time.
Video game systems of yesteryear couldn’t accommodate a franchise mode for the simple fact that there was either no memory or very limited memory. Therefore, you could store a season of stats at time if you were lucky. Nowadays, with hard drives and/or flash memory built in, you can store saved information to your heart’s content. So, once this started happening, I started getting into the football games, but was more interested in playing general manager. I enjoyed signing and cutting players, running the draft, and other tasks that a general manager performs.
The game that’s given me the most enjoyment in this regard is ESPN NFL 2K5.
It was a cheap purchase. I had purchased earlier installments of the game and had enjoyed them. However, NFL 2K5 got great reviews, and was also one of the cheapest games when it was originally reduced for the type of game that you got. What happened is that the NFL stopped licensing their logo and player names to anybody but EA Sports (i.e. Madden) beginning in 2006. So, since ESPN (who made the 2K franchise) knew that 2005 would be the last year, they released the game for $19.99. The normal price for earlier editions and for Madden was around $50. So, right away it was a hot seller.
I bought my copy about a year after it came out. I got it used at one of the game stores at the mall. What did I pay for it?$1.99
That’s right. I got it for 10% of the original value.
And it’s been the most economical video game purchase because I’ve played the heck out of it. Every few months I get the itch to play my hand at general manager. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that the Detroit Lions are our local team, and Matt Millen (before finally getting fired) is regarded as possibly the worst general manager in professional sporting history. When he’d make another bonehead move, I always like saying ‘Anybody could do better than that’ and I play it.(FYI, I’ve taken the Lions to the Super Bowl within three years on a couple of occasions)
So, while I’ve had games that I’ve played and played and played over the years, there has been no other game that I’ve gotten the value and ‘bang for the buck’ so to speak.